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I was at a family dinner with my brother recently, and my cousin introduced me to his uncle who happened to be an executive in a company I am going to intern for next summer. I started have a conversation with this person and we discussed all kinds of things relating to the company and why I chose to intern for them. My brother is way smarter than me and has much better language proficiency with English. He just sat next to us, not knowing what we were talking about since we were using heavy jargon and he did not know what most of the words meant. I included this artifact because it shows how jargon, which can be considered a type of dialect, has the ability to create its own space. One needs the proper context and background to understand what is being said, much like any other dialect.

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I am including this artifact because slang has become a huge part of language in the college atmosphere. I am exposed to slang vocabulary and phrases everywhere on campus, and the source of this is modern pop/rap music in my opinion. This genre of music has created its own dialect including slang words and phrases that are not restricted by grammatical rules. The younger generation sees the dialect of language used in this genre as cool, so they have incorporated it into their own language.

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This video was a huge meme when the song "Hello" by Adele came out. It is funny because Egyptians are stereotypically the "stupid" people in the Arab world. People with this accent or dialect are automatically seen as less smart. I chose this video as an example of linguistic profiling even in the Arab world.

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I came across this video and chose to include it because it reminded me of linguistic profiling. I say this because there is a stereotype that Germans are always angry, but in reality, they just pronounce their words aggressively.

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German Language Compared to other Languages

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I chose to include this assignment because I feel that it will prove to be one of the most essential topics in my future. I want to work for an international company and do projects around the world, so communication will be one of the most crucial things that I need to have an understanding of.

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Dialect of an International School student

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Dialect of an International School student

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Since I went to an international school, I grew up learning English by various teachers from all around the United States. Whenever I would think about my dialect in this class, I would realize that I don't have a specific regional dialect. My dialect did not seem weird to me because everyone at my school spoke the same way, but now I have come to the conclusion that my school can be considered a region with its own dialect. I included this because I believe my dialect plays an important factor in my life.

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I have come to realize through this class how people change the way they speak depending on even different groups of friends they are around. For example, whenever I am with my Arab friends, I subconsciously develop a different dialect that only we use with each other. Even the language we use while texting has the dialect that only we use. The same situation of conforming to a dialect happens frequently depending on which group of friends I am speaking to, which is pretty interesting considering that none of us speak that way normally. I included this because this conformity controls my dialect with me consciously knowing about it.

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I chose to include this assignment because although I was not an ESOL student, I did have to take ENGL 101x for non-native speakers at UMD rather than the regular ENGL 101. Therefore, I have seen first hand to some extent how the separation affects language and dialect.

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Response to Code Switching in Asian American Culture

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Response to Code Switching in Asian American Culture

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I chose to include this assignment because I could relate deeply with it. It allowed me to reflect on how I code switch in my language and how that has created my own style of language.

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Response to Code Switching in Asian-American culture

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Response to Written and Oral Language Assessment

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Response to Written and Oral Language Assessment

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I chose to include this assignment because I this is the base of every student in learning language. Every student takes language classes and is assessed on them, so this becomes important to shape the rest of their lives.

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Response to Written and Oral Language Assessment

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I chose to include this assignment because it breaks down sociolinguistics into different kinds of capital and one's culture. This includes language and dialect used as capital.

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I chose to include this assignment because Sociolinguistics is essentially the factors of a person's background that shape their language and dialect.

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I chose to include this image from a group activity because there are so many components that combine to form culture that it is difficult to see them tangibly come together. Language and culture affect one another as well. For example, in the middle eastern culture, hand gestures are a big part of communication, which leads to fewer words being necessary to express something than expressing the same thing in English. This is when culture influences language. However, if one learns a different language, and the phrases and ideologies in the meaning behind each word in that language start changing their perspective, this is when language shapes one’s culture.

In the image, we as a group decided that Society, Economics and Religion were the fundamentals behind one’s culture. Therefore, those are the abutments for the building made of legos which represents culture. Furthermore, one’s roots, family background, the environment in which they grew up, their personal experiences and outside influences are all the second phase of the lego building. Language is the third phase that influences culture. The blocks made of race and political affiliation are barely part of the building since their intensity depends from person to person.

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I chose to include this assignment because it helped me start the class off by first reflecting on what factors have affected my language and how my background effects other aspects of my life.

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How does language shape the way you think?

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How does language shape the way you think?

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I stumbled across this video a couple of years ago, and this video is the reason I started wondering about how language actually shapes the way one thinks. This video discusses the cardinal directions that people use in Kuuk Thaayorre and how this allows them to stay more oriented and focused. Additionally, it discusses people's perspective on certain things based on the gender of an object or the grammatical structure used in regard to the object in their language. I included this artifact because it really gets you thinking about how you might have had a different point of view on certain topics if you had grown up learning/speaking a different language or dialect.

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You'll be surprised by how much your language shapes your perspective.

Watch the full TED Talk here: http://bit.ly/2J6QI3H